twofalls said:
I have a rave and a couple of rants about section E. I've read the first third of it at this point, and am enjoying the ideas in it a great deal. The Portriat rooms I'm particuarly impressed with (E14 - 16). I understand that it's just dungeon dressing, but its little touches like this that make a setting really come alive and I was very impressed to find that level of detail here. Kudos Jim (or which ever one of your writers did these rooms).
lee hammock did some wonderful stuff in here.
i'm really pleased about how he brought it all together
i especially like the barghest factions and the level of detail
of the major NPCs. lee strikes me as a full DM who likes to
add details to important characters.
where Region A (written by Michael Hammes) is very much what
a first level adventure is supposed to be, the conditions of Region E
should really surprise the PCs. there's a great deal of internal
consistency there, with creatures only being concerned about
Region I... however, depending on the DM, the inevitables can
be concerned about whatever Region the DM wants the PCs to
go to next.
if Region A is filled with the kyton, lemure, osyluth series discussed
earlier, a lot of garrisons/patrols will take place in the southern
portion of Region E
twofalls said:
There is a large area of emtpy rooms lacking any description to be found on the map between the Barghest lairs and the Celestrial Formian hive. There is a similar area of empty rooms on the other side of the map though I haven't read that far yet, I can just see that they are unkeyed. I'll have to find somthing to plug in there to detail out those empty rooms or the pacing of the adventure will be destroyed as my group examines empty room after empty room. I'm open to suggestions on what to do with these areas. The other option of course is to simply eliminate the rooms, but I find this option distasteful particuarly since I'll have to modify the map as I draw it out for the players. Also, room E44 is not keyed on the map. Its not difficult to deduce where its supposed to be however.
the rooms provide a buffer zone for the creatures. while they may lair
here from time to time, the barghests know they can't maintain everything,
especially since the competition for space is so high.
and because the same encounter over and over against with barghests and shadows would have been silly, these are great rooms for the DM to have random encounters, duplicate monster encounters, or some impossible series of creatures that cannot be killed.
consider mujina in japanese folklore.
they still haunt and pester the other creatures, but cannot be harmed by weapons (100% incorporeal miss chance)
they move items around and perplex the very LAWFUL inevitables who cannot grok what these beasts are. the DM can then said the PCs on a mission to get rid of them. especially, if they came through the fiendish portal in Region A
twofalls said:
Also curious, are the Formians who are described as dead in thier cells these past two centuries since the first earthquake. They were attacked by unidentifed assailants, merely described as non-insectoid in room E31. Who were these mystery attackers, are they important in any way to the story (even if they aren't they are... as all the little pieces make the overall story congruent)? Is it going to matter if the attackers are described as demons, devils, orcs, or smurfs?
this is an example of us stealing from Ed Greenwood's style... poorly
ed's adventures always have that inexplicable dagger hidden in a pillar
that have nothing to do with anything (like Room N223), but seem to
add SOOO MUCH flavor that you can't help but put it in. the DM is free
to do whatever he likes with these formians, or even change them to
demon prisoners.
because there IS a really large insect contingent in the Region, the
dead formians could have had these creatures "chest-burst" out
of them centuries ago, still feeding off the detritus of the Region,
growing with each decade.
that's just off the top of my head, though, so unless you want me to
go back and read the region (please don't ask me to read it again),
maybe someone who is reading it now can link the concepts together
better than i can.
hope this helps